Wearable Technologies And Their Impact On Health & Fitness
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When Becky Stern, director of wearable electronics at Adafruit Industries says, “Having technology on you, around you, inside you 24/7 is going to be totally commonplace,” she's right (check out the video below). The resulting implications for society and whole industries in general is immense. The melding of the physical and digital worlds continues and what it means for health clubs, fitness, and wellness in general is quite interesting. Apple's upcoming IWatch, Google Glass, and other advancing technologies will all enable increased digital connectivity. Wearable technologies are coming to the mainstream. This next new era of devices will take us places that few might imagine and will likely replace the smartphone at some point.
So what does this mean for fitness and health clubs ? I hope to find out. When Google selected me, along with 8,000 others on the planet including colleague Justin Sanchez at Fitmarc, to receive a pair of Google Glass, I was thrilled because we asked to be considered in order to understand more about the practical application of these things. Hopefully you'll enjoy some content soon from our "Glasses". But what this new era is will be more than just what Google Glass represents. Its a new realm of potential for the fitness, wellness and health club industries.
Making connectivity easier, more intuitive, less intrusive and less expensive can mean the ability to support positive behaviors like exercise and proper eating more effectively. It can also serve to diagnose health problems more easily. For clubs it means the ability to offer digital services and greater connectivity to members with out much hastle. Even more interesting to me is how the costs of these new technologies will continue to fall so that enterprising organizations can create solutions for those who've been unable to benefit from them before. Monitoring young children for activity, creating games to encourage their participation in fitness, and other technology platforms will be created to serve populations who before were not able to benefit from programs and solutions due to economics.
To learn more read this article and watch the cool video below. If you are interested in being a bigger part of the revolution of technology in fitness please join the Fitness Industry Technology Council and please tell me, Bryan O'Rourke, what do you think about wearable technology trends ? How do you think they will impact the health and fitness industries ? I'd love to hear from you.
About the author:
Bryan O’Rourke is a health club industry expert, technologist, financier, shareholder and executive in several fitness companies. He works for Fitmarc, which delivers Les Mills programs to over 700 facilities in the US. He advises successful global brands, serves as a member of the GGFA Think Tank and serves as CEO of the Fitness Industry Technology Council. To join FIT-C visit www.fit-c.org . To learn more contact Bryan here today .
